The Alósaka cult of the Hopi Indians

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

From the late Mr A. M. Stephen’s rough sketches, notes, and measurements of these images (which the writer has not seen), it appears that they are made of cottonwood, the larger one about four feet tall, the other five inches shorter. Mr Stephen thought that they represented male and female, and his sketches of them show ground for that belief. Each has a well carved head, from which arise two straight projections which will be spoken of as horns.

In his studies of the Hopi Indians the author has several times visited the shrine at Awatobi where these objects were once kept, finding it a depression in a large bowlder, which was formerly walled up with masonry, making a shelf upon which the images stood. The entrance to this shrine faces the east, and the bowlder lies a few feet lower down on the cliff than the foundation of the old mission church of San Bernardino de Awatobi. By interrogating Indians regarding the images, he has found that they represent beings called Alósakas, the cult of which, once practised at Awatobi, still survives in the rites of the modern Hopi pueblos. Many legends concerning Alósaka have been collected, but only during the last few years has the author witnessed ceremonies connected with their cult. As a result of these observations a suggestion in regard to its significance is offered.

The distinctive symbolic feature of these images is the horns (ála) above referred to, from which they take their name. There is a priesthood at Walpi called the Aaltû or Horn-men (to whom the name Alósaka is also given), who are the special guardians of the cult and who perform rites which throw light on its nature. These Aaltû, in their personifications of Alósakas, wear on their heads close-fitting wicker caps,[3] on which are mounted two large, artificial, curved projections made of buckskin, painted white, and resembling horns of the mountain sheep[4] which, in certain of their actions, the Aaltû imitate.

The three Walpi ceremonies in which we find survivals of the Alósaka cult are the Flute, the New-fire, and the Winter Solstice, which are especially instructive in a study of its significance.

Personations of Alósaka as Escorts

In the Flute and New-fire ceremonies the role of the personators of Alósaka is that of an escort who leads the columns of dancers or processions of priests.

The personation of Alósaka in the Walpi Flute-dance was by a member of the Ása clan, who, on the fifth day of the ceremony, drew a line of ground corn and made rain-cloud symbols along the path by which altar objects were carried from one place to another. He made a line of meal across the trail by which one enters Walpi, in order to symbolically close it to visitors on the seventh day, when the historic reception of the Flute chief by the Bear and Snake chiefs was dramatized, and brushed away this meal when the Flute chief was invited to enter the pueblo at that time. He also “closed” the trail a second time when the Flute priests marched into the pueblo, and brushed the meal away as they proceeded. On the last day he led a procession of priests to the Sun spring (Táwapa), where a ceremony of wading into the water was performed, and escorted it back to Walpi on the afternoon of the last day, when the public Flute exercises were conducted. He sprinkled a line of meal over which certain sacred objects were carried from the Flute altar to the roof of the house, and led the priests as they bore these objects from place to place. There are only obscure hints regarding the nature of the Alósaka cult in these acts.

In the New-fire ceremonies we find Alósaka filling the role of escort, and also that of tyler at the kiva hatches. He escorted the public dancers, visited the trails, and drew lines of meal across them to prevent strangers from entering the pueblo. He inspected these trails from time to time, guarded the ladder while the new fire was being kindled, and carried it to the other kivas. These duties are those of warriors, but Alósaka was not armed, nor is the mountain sheep which he represents a probable personation of a warrior.

It is interesting to note that there is no Alósaka escort of the Flute priests in their public dances at the Middle Mesa, and, judging from photographs, it would seem that there is a like absence at Oraibi, which may be due to the absence of certain clans. Thus, one of the chiefs of the Aaltû or Alósaka society at Walpi belongs to the Ása clan of Tanoan extraction limited to the East Mesa. The first colonists of this clan were essentially warriors, and their performance of escort duty may be a survival of former times.

As there are two chiefs of equal standing in the Aaltû priesthood, one of the Ása and the other of the Bear clan (one of the oldest in Walpi), it would seem that there are two phases of the cult, and that the function of Alósaka as an escort is distinct from an older one common to other Hopi villages.